


That We'd Sink a Few More

by hellonik



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, Romantic Friendship, non-explicit Darren Criss/OFC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 14:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellonik/pseuds/hellonik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a girl, Darren is taken by surprise, Chris is sort of in the middle of it all, and everyone feels a lot of feelings. And Ashley is very observant and also Chris's best friend <i>for a reason.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	That We'd Sink a Few More

**Author's Note:**

> this work contains very non-explicit Darren/OFC and is very firmly ensconced in the CrissColfer-endgame camp.
> 
> this story was written to a constant repetition to Adele’s cover of Lovesong and Bad Books's "I Begged You Everything". title is taken from the latter.
> 
> please feel free to let me know if you enjoyed this.<3

Darren remembers being 14, nothing more than a skinny young boy with a mane of curly hair and a smile too big for his face, wide-eyed with ambitious dreams stuck in his head. He remembers wondering what love was, what it meant, and how it felt. Most importantly though, he wondered how all of those things related to him, how he could condense all of that down to how it was relevant to who he was and who he would be.

Since he was a precocious kid with an overly-active brain and these _thoughts_ in his head that he had no idea what to do with, he went and asked. He asked everyone who would listen – everyone he knew and everyone his parents knew. He still to this day doesn’t remember who told him the one answer that stuck. That one answer that he would go back to, again and again; as a teenager, as an adult, as Darren Criss; as Harry Potter and Blaine Anderson and every other character he played that had to deal with love. He grounded himself in this one thing.

He doesn’t have a clue who said it – he just remembers, verbatim, what was said. The soft smile on the person’s face, like the edges of a dream; features blurred and gender unrecognizable, but soft smile sure, voice like melting honey, in all its sweetness, in all its pure honesty.

_“Love. Love is –“_

~

Chris remembers meeting Darren and feeling his insides shiver with nerves - remembers Darren’s sunlight smile and glittering eyes and _warmth_ like no one he has ever met and remembers _trembling_ with it, like that moment right after the drop in a roller-coaster when you’re not quite sure whether you want to cry or not and you’re shaking with how quickly the adrenaline rushes out of your system.

He doesn’t remember much else. He remembers making some kind of wry comment and making Darren laugh, loud and genuine. He remembers the way Darren looks at him – like he’s surprised to see him standing in front of him, like he can’t believe _this is his life_ and Chris wants to laugh and laugh because _oh my God, I know, right?_

Chris thinks things will change, that he’ll stop feeling like he’s about to jump off a plane every time he’s in Darren’s presence and Darren will stop looking at him like he’s not sure if he’s _real_ and _exacerbating_ the issue.

(Nothing really changes.)  


~  


Darren is kind of always there and he’s always happy and enthusiastic and supportive and God, constantly, _constantly_ touching Chris. Chris, well, Chris adapts.

It’s not that Chris isn’t used to people touching him – and okay, really, he’s not. Not the way Darren does it, anyway – without pause, without significance, without constantly thinking _I don’t care if you’re gay, I’ll touch you anyway, because I’m not homophobic and look, I’m touching you, just like I would if you were straight._

Honestly, Chris appreciates the effort. He really does, but the thing is – the thing _is_ that Darren doesn’t have to make an effort in the first place and apparently that makes a consequential difference.

It’s more that Chris lets himself touch right back, because normally he doesn’t – with guys, he lets them touch first and he’ll respond in kind but he doesn’t _melt_ into it like he does with Darren and he doesn’t know _why_ he does. He doesn’t know why he goes so pliant and relaxed with Darren’s hands on him.

Chris adores the Glee guys, all of them. Mark, Cory, Kevin, Harry – he loves all of them and they are his family but he can’t help but keep himself a little reserved anyway because all straight boys have a line and he knows that and he refuses to mistakenly cross it. Darren though, either Darren doesn’t have any walls or Chris is an exception but either way he doesn’t care – not really.

It’s one part relief and one part frustration because Chris has no idea where he stands. He just knows that he spent half a season with Darren as his on-screen boyfriend and 3 months with Darren as his on- _stage_ boyfriend and Darren already absorbs physical contact like plants absorb rays of sunlight and that makes them much more comfortable with each others' physical presence than is generally socially acceptable according to their heteronormative society.

Chris is possibly, maybe, already half in love with Darren, so this also unequivocally complicates matters.

~

Her name is Isabelle and he calls her Belle (and _of course_ Darren would find a girl with a _fucking_ Disney Princess name) and she’s beautiful and sweet and perfect for him and Chris hates her a tiny bit. Yet he also loves her because she’s genuine and honest and sarcastic. She smiles at Chris sometimes, soft and sad, like she knows something he doesn’t and it terrifies him.

Darren is warm and caring and familiar with her – smiles at her like she’s so dear to him and Chris wants to punch something most of the time.

She’s a little aloof when she’s on her own – everything contained, controlled. When she’s with Darren or someone engages her though, she comes alive and she cracks right open.

They were friends first. Call the calligrapher; it’s a _fucking_ fairytale.

They’ve already been together for a couple of months when he brings her around, long before shooting or preparation for season 3 starts. He says it’s not that serious but she looks at him like she can’t believe he’s real and most members of the cast feel a little bad that he’s going to end up breaking her heart. She smiles at Darren like she knows he’s going to, too.

(Still, nothing really changes.)

~

The first time Darren brings her around the cast she feels like an outsider. She feels segregated from them and it’s a difficult thing to accept – that Darren became a part of this family so quickly, slipped right in, yet she can’t see an in for herself.

Darren’s the loveliest boy she’s ever met and she’s so in love with him it hurts but she never did anything by halves anyway, so she ignores that part of herself, generally.

It’s harder when she spends more time with him while he’s with the cast. They are all perfectly friendly towards her, but she gets the feeling she’s encroaching on someone’s territory and she knows that they don’t do it on purpose but she _feels_ it. It’s easy enough to ignore though, for the most part.

But she has eyes, and it’s harder to ignore the way Darren looks at Chris.

And the way she looks at Darren.

And the way _Chris_ looks at Darren.

She feels her heart break because something like that is _inevitable_.

Darren has always soaked up physical contact like a cat luxuriating in the heat – it’s no surprise for her when she sees the way he’s so tactile with everyone.

What _is_ a surprise is the ease with which Chris and Darren interact. Darren finds Chris’s skin like a heat-seeking missile – a hand on the wrist, the forearm, a bared hip. In private, they draw together like magnets; falling into each other subconsciously, bodies sliding together until they click like puzzle pieces.

~

She watches from the kitchen in Darren’s apartment as he slips an arm around Chris, both of them laughing softly as they simultaneously hold separate conversations while settling into each other without thought.

(Harry is dancing with Amber in the middle of the tiny room and everyone is soft-focus and slow and normally she would love this sort of ambiance, but she only has eyes for the boys on the couch right then, because she’s a bit of an emotional masochist when it comes to Darren, isn’t she? That’s why she’s still there.)

This is nothing she hasn’t seen before and they are ridiculous and cliché and she wants to cry because _fuck_ \- fuck, she’s _done._ There’s nothing here for her and her heart is _breaking_ and she hates Chris Colfer a little more in that moment.

She turns away from them and Ashley catches her eye, inclines her head a little, a small, slightly sad smile on her face. Isabelle knows that she won’t get much pity from any of them – not that she’s looking for it. She might get a little bit of compassion, but she knows they won’t, what – take her side?

 

As if that’s even an expectation. As if there are even sides to take. There’s Chris and Darren and there’s her and she doesn’t get a side, because she’s basically a stranger to them, as much as Darren cares for her. These people don’t know her and Chris is the baby of their group and she’s pretty sure everyone is half in love with the kid, at least, and they’re going to root for him to get his man, even if _his_ man is technically _her_ man. And she can’t really be pissed about it because Chris hasn’t _done_ anything and she doesn’t know _any_ of them and Darren looks at _him_ like she looks at Darren, and God. She’s a little bit of a wreck.

Isabelle closes her eyes, shaking her head and shaking all over and Jesus _, fuck,_ Darren is going to be fucking miserable but she needs this time with him, just this little bit of time with him because she doesn’t stand a chance and she’s going to be selfish before she has to be idiotically, moronically in love and win the martyr of the year award, _fuck._

So she catches Chris alone, like some psychotic, jealous girlfriend, on his way back from the bathroom and she’s so ashamed her face burns with it and she’s closer to tears than she is ever comfortable with and she can’t believe she’s been reduced to this.

~

It’s 2 weeks before they start shooting the third season and everyone is at Darren’s. It’s 3 am and the atmosphere is slow and lazy, heavy with heat and alcohol; with the gentle buzz everyone has going. Chris is curled into one corner of the couch, laughing soft and high as Harry insistently leads a drowsy, giggling Amber around the small room in a somber waltz, their movement slow like they’re dragging themselves through water with each step. He’s talking quietly to Naya while he laughs, both of them slurring their words a little, more from this inexplicable sleepiness trailing through them than the alcohol itself.

Even Darren, manic as he is, and Ashley, easily the most hyper-active of the group, are more relaxed than usual; everyone more dozing than awake at that point.

Darren unerringly finds his way to the couch Chris is slowly disappearing into, fitting himself snug along Chris’s side and his arm slipping around the younger man like it’s always belonged there, just a touch proprietary, as he says something through his laughter to Kevin.

Chris’s body reacts of its own accord, turning into Darren’s body just enough to be noticeable, fitting himself there easily enough, close enough, to raise an eyebrow had anyone been watching closely enough.

(Ashley’s watching closely enough; she raises an eyebrow.)

Chris doesn’t look for the girl he knows is there. He’s gotten adept at ignoring her existence unless she’s right in front of him and that makes him a terrible person but he really, really can’t care. He’s sorry, he’s _so sorry_ , but he can’t.

Naya and Kevin wander off, long since distracted, and Chris and Darren speak to each other in quiet voices, laughter interjecting occasionally. They talk about everything and nothing. The conversation spins in so many different directions, falls into so many different tangents. It’s one of those conversations that you know was enjoyable, that you know made you laugh, made you contemplate, made you _happy_ , but you can’t possibly recall what exactly you talked about at any given moment later.

“Chris, no, Chris, look at this. Look at all of us. I can’t imagine being happier than I am right now. With all of you. You guys, man. You. You make me happy.” Darren is smiling _so brightly_ , his eyes sparkling and hazy and half-lidded, and Chris wants to be here forever, just a little bit.

“Yeah, no. Yeah. I get it, I get it. I can’t imagine any of us being, you know, like, in the past, or whatever. Like, I can only be here right now and think of right now being the present. I can’t imagine it ever being the past. Right?”

“Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You got it, man.” Darren’s kind of delirious when he’s this tipsy, _languid_ with it, but the way he looks at Chris makes Chris’s stomach twist up and makes him want to _blush_ – like he’s everything Darren wanted, like Chris got everything _right_ and it’s _ridiculous_. Darren is ridiculous and Chris wants to be here forever _,_ oh _hell._

Chris lets his head fall to Darren’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to look at him, so he doesn’t have to see his eyes or his smile and feel like he’s aching with it and he tucks his head under Darren’s chin and hides from his guilt.

Maybe Chris is a little tipsier than he had originally thought – he’s not usually this maudlin. At least not in the company of other people, anyway.

He can be pathetic in his own time, but not with his friends.

“Truth,” Darren says in his ear, nonsensically.

Chris pauses for a moment before replying.

“Sunshine or rain?” he finally decides, for no good reason, voice quiet.

Darren laughs, low and sweet in his ear and Chris ignores it and waits for the answer, instead.

“It depends on who I’m seeing that day. Some people _are_ my sunshine, and sometimes I want both,” he says, like it’s a completely normal thing to say, like it’s a _natural_ thing to say. It’s not. It’s an absurd thing to say and it’s just this side of _purple prose_ and right out of a romance novel but also. Also, it’s _Darren._ It’s Darren so it makes Chris want to cry a little because that’s who Darren is. That’s Darren being honest and it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever heard and Darren _means it_ and he’s also a bit drunk. He wants to cry but he laughs instead, a little heavy and a little bitter but too fond by far, anyway.

“Truth,” Chris says, still laughing.

“Sunshine or rain?” Darren returns, maybe a touch too serious but also grinning and so pleased with himself.  
Chris laughs outright, now – it comes bubbling from his chest like an ache and it slips out high and clear like champagne.

“Amber,” he says, happy, smiling. “Ashley. Cory, Lea, Mark, you. Everyone. Everyone here.” It’s not even a real answer and it’s stupid pretentious nonsense really and too metaphorical but he can’t just say _you_ so he makes it okay to say it anyway and at least his answer is more honest than just saying _rain_ or _sunshine_.

He lets himself slip deeper into Darren’s arms and listens as Darren hums quietly and brushes a kiss along his forehead and it doesn’t mean anything because it’s Darren and he just _is_ and Chris wants to fall asleep like this, with a smile and _it’s not real_ a mantra in his head. He pulls himself away instead, batting away Darren’s grasping hands with a laugh, chest too tight, and Darren is so oblivious and Chris can’t handle it, right then. He leaves to go to the restroom – to breathe some air that doesn’t smell like everything he’s not allowed to even consider having.

~

Isabelle finds him when he’s on his way back, catching him in the hall, music and laughter trailing in from the living room, strangely muted. He feels something painful and penitent and _humiliating_ seize his chest abruptly. She looks a little like she’s falling apart; a little desperate and a little hopeless.

He knows that feeling and he hates that maybe he might be the cause of that in her even though he doesn’t know _why._

She just looks at him, for a minute. Dark hair and dark eyes and pale skin like Snow White, and he thinks that that would have been a weird name for her parents to give her so it’s a good thing they stuck with Isabelle, what with the teasing she would have been subjected to and everything and _Christ_ , even his _brain_ rambles when he’s nervous.

When she finally speaks, her voice is quiet and sad and she looks like she’s going to cry which is just awful because Chris is not good with girls he doesn’t know crying in front of him. He might end up pushing her into the bathroom and running away and then Darren would hate him.

“You should see the way he looks at you, Chris.” Which is probably the worst possible way to open this conversation but she doesn’t know how to say what she wants to say and Chris just doesn’t know what to do period.

She keeps going, because she needs to say this.

“And look, I don’t stand a chance here. He doesn’t love me. Not like that. The way he _is_ with you is one of the hardest things I have ever had to witness and there’s a part of me that hates you for letting that happen except it’s Darren, so I get it. I get it. I know how he is and part of me really does hate him a little, too. But. Chris.” She chokes, stops, and she’s crying, huge tears sliding in tandem down her cheeks and Chris wants to cry but he doesn’t, instead he hugs her and doesn’t push her away and run even though his heart is breaking too, for both of them, because she _doesn’t get it._ She’s got it wrong – she doesn’t get that none of that means anything, it’s just Darren being Darren.

“Chris. I am so in love with that boy. I am so in love with him and he isn’t with me.” Because of you, she doesn’t say. Because he’s in love with you, she doesn’t say.

“But I just need some time with him. I’m just – I’m going to be the selfish bitch here and tell you to leave him alone for awhile because he’s going to go to you. He’s going to go after you because he’ll finally realize everything but give me the interim, okay? Just give me that time in between. And it’s stupid and juvenile and it won’t matter but I have no idea what to do. I just know that I can’t walk away right now but when I do it better be worth it so just. Give me this, okay?” She’s still crying, harder now, soft, quiet sobs catching and mangling every other word, strangling her breath. And then she just stops, stops and breathes carefully, slow and shaky while she gathers herself up.

Chris feels like his heart is breaking because he won’t. Darren won’t come after him. He’ll be sad and confused but Isabelle will make him happy and he’ll be alright after awhile without Chris. Chris, though, will be a mess for a much longer time, after.

He nods anyway, because that was the deal he made with himself. Everything was fine as long as Isabelle didn’t say anything, but the moment she did – the moment she said stop, he had to.

So he nods. He says, quietly, because he feels like if he speaks any louder then he’ll fly apart and nobody needs  
to see that, “Okay. Okay. But he won’t. You’re – you’re perfect for him and if he wanted me he could have had me a long time ago.” He despises the way his words catch at the end there. He tempers it with a slightly sardonic lift of his eyebrow, self-mocking, trying to counteract the vulnerability.

She shakes her head as she wipes the last of her tears away, cheeks and eyes red and lips puffy and she’s so beautiful and Chris hates her just a little more even as he feels compassion well in him. It feels like they are rivals but they aren’t, because he’s no competition for her - yet he still can’t let go of this ugly feeling twisting up in him, even though he’s trying _,_ he’s _trying_.

“You just took him by surprise.” And then, so softly, just this side of begrudgingly, “Thank you.”

There’s no real gratitude in her voice.

She hates him a little.

But there’s nothing else to say.

“Keep him distracted for a bit. He can’t see me like this.”

And then she’s slipping away to the bathroom that’s connected to Darren’s room, not the one in the hall, and it’s so intimate that Chris’s stomach hurts but he just watches her go and then turns around and lets himself be distracted by Darren, because after tonight they won’t be able to do this anymore. He tucks his body close and sings quietly, just for Darren even though Darren doesn’t know it, while he laughs softly, rubs his thumb along Chris’s neck until Isabelle comes back looking a little tired and red-eyed but not as if she was sobbing in the hallway not 20 minutes ago. Chris gets up to leave and says a quiet goodbye to everyone, Darren last.

He hugs Darren close for a moment, insists that he’s fine to take a cab home, and leaves.

When he gets home he curls up in bed and cries, just a little, and lets himself have this one night to really, really grieve for what he can’t have because fuck, it hurts, alright, and he hasn’t let himself do this yet and he is allowed to have one night. Just this one.

~

Chris doesn’t sleep at all that night, and he meets everyone for an impromptu lunch the next day with dark circles smudged under his eyes. The first couple of weeks before shooting is usually filled with the group spending nearly every day together because they are all finally back in town at the same time and their family reunions last for weeks, apparently.

Darren’s inclusion isn’t much of a surprise. Besides the fact that Darren is in it for the long haul, as far as Glee is concerned – everyone on set and in the cast is in love with Kurt and Blaine’s relationship; not to mention the giant clusterfuck it would be when the fans lost all of their shit if Blaine and Kurt ever split – there’s also the simple fact that Darren sort of slipped into the group with an ease that surprised all of them. Chord, as much as they all loved him, just didn’t mesh well with Chris’s Kurt, which is why him being Kurt’s boyfriend was scrapped at the last minute. Then Darren waltzed in with Blaine at the tip of his tongue and the soles of his feet and he fell in with Kurt with an almost eerie amount of effortlessness and the chemistry was there from the start. Ryan and Brad are in love with Darren in that way that only older gay men can be and he has them wrapped around his finger and they all know it. With Blaine falling into place so easily, Darren slotting into the group like he did was nearly predetermined.

It’s not as hard as he thought it would be though to give Darren a half-hearted hug, to smile absently, to always be drawn into another conversation before Darren can start one with him. Shrugging off the casual touches isn’t too difficult, either.

That’s not to say it isn’t torture, because it is. With every slightly hurt, confused look Darren directs at him, Chris feels like he’s that much closer to falling apart, but he smiles and breezes through it.

He just thought Darren would put up more of a protest.

He thought maybe Darren might fight it a little more, because he’s an idiot sometimes and he’s 21 so he’s entitled, and he still hears her words in his head, _he’s going to go after you._

He hates the small part of himself that was still hoping because he can feel it very distinctly as it falls and twists in his stomach with something that resembles despair and he _refuses_ to acknowledge it.

~

Darren comes to her apartment after he has lunch with the cast, and Isabelle feels shame crawl up her throat when she answers the door. He looks distracted and confused – like he’s lost his footing somehow. A small part of her is relieved that Chris kept his word but a larger part of herself feels a little more heartbroken because this is what he looks like after half of a day with an inexplicably withdrawn Chris Colfer and it hurts much more than she had originally thought it would.

The rest of her is quietly stewing in her guilt and still stubbornly refusing to let go of this. She doesn’t understand herself right now, doesn’t understand why she’s doing this. She just knows that she needs this and that makes her a truly awful person at this moment but she doesn’t have the strength to help it.

Sometimes being a horrible person is the only thing that’s going to help you and she hates the part of herself that’s thinking that way.

She doesn’t know how she became this.

She leads Darren inside and they curl up on the couch, but he’s distant like he has been lately for a long time.

She wants to cry. She doesn’t.

“How was lunch?” She asks, because she’s a horrible emotionally masochistic person at this moment.

“It was – I don’t know. Good, I guess?” He sounds lost.

“I guess?” she teases softly, hoping to inspire a smile. She used be able to do that, when she was just his friend and not his girl friend and she doesn’t know how they took a step back with the transition but somehow they did because the smile he lets loose is absent. He’s not here with her right now.

“Yeah. I don’t know. Chris was acting – weird. I’m a little worried about him.” He’s so genuine and she wants to punch him so badly but she also wants to kiss him, so she goes with the latter. She kisses him softly on the lips and settles close to him and whatever is going on with them or Chris doesn’t matter because he always finds comfort in physical touch and this time is no different.

“Maybe he just wasn’t feeling well? I think he can take care of himself, Darren.” She keeps her voice soft and mild and the only thing she’s hearing in her head is _awful-awful-awful._

“That’s not the way he acts when he’s not feeling well, Belle.” It’s such an innocuous statement, but it’s pulling her heart right out of her chest, fuck.

“Maybe I should go check on him.” He’s already moving to get up but she keeps him sitting, tries to placate him and this is ridiculous, all of this. All of it. It is so ridiculous that he doesn’t know; how can he not know how in love with that boy he is?

“Just give him time, Darren. You’ll probably see him tomorrow anyway.” She feels like she’s on auto-pilot while she speaks because she’s scrabbling to put herself back together in time to stop the tears from falling because all of this, _all of this,_ is so _ridiculous_ and she feels hopeless and frustrated and she can’t believe that Darren, of all people, is making her feel this way.

He’s the sweetest thing alive and he’s breaking her heart.

He finally relents and he stays the night with her. She wonders why that hurts so much.

~

Chris doesn’t see Darren for two more days after the lunch, and for some reason, it’s much harder than it was the first time.

Maybe because he’s ignored all of Darren’s texts and skipped out on whatever get-together they had the day before, but Darren watches him like a hawk at Ashley’s that night.

Chris still manages to avoid him.

He feels like curling up in a ball and never unraveling himself because everything fucking hurts and it shouldn’t and all of this feels wrong, _wrong_.

He leaves early, feels Darren’s dark eyes follow him out and feels himself tremble down to his bones.

~

Ashley comes by his house the next morning and he makes her crepes with nutella because that’s the only thing he can make. She sits him down while they eat and asks for the whole story.

He gives it to her.

She doesn’t interject, and by the end she just looks – distressed.

“This is _ridiculous.”_

He nods slowly.

“I know.”

“Just talk to him. You have to know, Chris –“

He just shakes his head at her sharply, eyes down.

Ashley sighs quietly and watches him for a moment, patient.

He doesn’t say anything and she finally relents.

“I’ll help you stay away from him for a while, I guess. But boo, you gotta’ let him know at least. He would not stop  
asking me last night what was going on with you. He looked a wreck, I’m just saying.”

“No, no. I can’t – she’s the one who has to talk to him. If I do it will come out all wrong and it’ll seem like I’m trying to make her the bad guy which she’s not. If anything it was Darren and I who were out of line but Darren is Darren so what can you say to him? Stop being yourself? You can’t do that to him. It’s like trying to contain lightning in a jar.” He’s rambling again.

“Chris, baby, what – I mean, how do you actually feel? About Darren, I mean?” She’s quiet but not hesitant. Ashley is never hesitant about anything. He’s always loved that about her.

“I – I. I just. He’s Darren. He’s Darren.” It’s all he can say. He can’t say _he’s my sunshine_ and _he’s my rain_ and _if I ever want both he’s that, too_ and he can’t say _he makes me want to sing_ and _he makes me feel like I can always be happy again._ He can’t say _I love him so much I’m not sure if I’ll ever really get over it because it doesn’t feel like something you ever get over._ He can’t say any of that because it’s juvenile and painfully, painfully honest and agonizingly young in a way that he very much _is_ and he _can’t help it._

Ashley just nods slowly, like she gets it.                                             

She probably does.

~

Everyone notices. It’s very, very difficult not to and everyone goes up to them at one point, wondering what’s going on. Chris brushes them off with a smile and a laugh and Darren tries too, but mostly fails.

The one confrontation that happens isn’t even really a confrontation and no one is around to see it. Darren finally manages to catch Chris alone in the kitchen at Amber’s.

As soon as Darren slips in Chris attempts to get out, glancing around quickly for Ashley, but Darren blocks him off, grips his shoulders and pushes him against the wall and pushes the breath from Chris’s lungs in the same motion. Darren’s eyes are wide and his lips are red and Chris knows the flush is high on his own cheeks from the alcohol and his shirt is more unbuttoned than buttoned and he just really can’t do this right here, right now, with Darren.

Darren looks like a bit of a mess, like Chris feels, and he’s speaking low and quick and a little frantic and his words are _devastating_ Chris.

“Chris, man, I need to know what I did. I don’t know what’s wrong and I don’t know what the hell I fucked up but you’ve got to let me know so I can _fix_ it. Because I know, okay, I know that I must have fucked something up – I know that I do that. But you have to give me a chance-“ and Chris is going to fall apart, just spill everything, if he doesn’t get it together.

He gathers everything of himself that he can and pulls it all back in and wraps it tight so that nothing can slip out for Darren to grab hold of and he squeezes Darren’s shoulder, gives him a small smile, says quietly, “No, no, Darren – Darren you didn’t do anything. You didn’t do anything, I promise, okay? But I gotta’ go. We’re okay though, don’t worry.”

And he slips away before Darren can see his expression, or worse, before he can catch sight of Darren’s.

~

Isabelle keeps hoping, foolishly, that it will pass, but it doesn’t. It’s been nearly a week and every time she sees Darren he looks more and more lost, like someone shook the foundation he’s standing on and he can’t quite gain back his equilibrium. She looks at him and thinks _I did that_ because she did and she deserves the pain of knowing that and she also thinks _he did that_ because as guilty as she feels he did it to himself too, and she thinks _Chris did that_ because it was all of them, really. And maybe least of all it was her, but that doesn’t matter because she’s the one dragging this out and she knows that at the very least.

If she’s really relentlessly honest with herself, she knows it’s because a little vindictive part of her wanted both of them to suffer and because she did actually want some time with him – a Last Supper sort of thing. And maybe to also see if she was right, if he would be as heartbroken as she thought he might be and if he loved Chris the way she thought he did. Now it’s breaking her heart all over again that she was right. She was right and she’s really done now. She’s done with nursing her pride and coddling herself and giving herself this last hope because it’s all very much hopeless and she’s known that.

It hardly matters in the end – Darren stops by after being with everyone at Amber’s all evening and he walks in silently and looks at her with new eyes – he’s found his footing and she knows that he knows now.

She’s so tired.

He lays on her bed and she runs her fingers through his hair and they stay up all night talking, just talking, and she doesn’t tell him that she’s in love with him and he doesn’t tell her that he’s in love with Chris.

He gives her this last night.

They laugh and she cries, just a little, and he looks at her with wide, glittering eyes and says in a quiet, shredded voice, “I don’t know how this happened.”

She pushes his hair back with her hand and kisses his forehead and says quietly “Yes you do. It just took you a while to realize it.” He nods slowly, eyes pained.

He says, “I’m so sorry.”

She says, “I can’t forgive you yet” and “I’m sorry too.”

They have coffee at 5 am and he walks out after kissing her gently on the mouth with none of the fire that was there during their first couple of weeks and it all faded much too quickly and she’s left here with this ache that moves like smoke through her chest, slips between her ribs and wraps around her heart like a glove and squeezes and pulses with every beat.

~

Darren goes home, exhausted to the point of fatigue and jittery with this need to see Chris _now, now, now,_ but he knows better. He knows that if he goes now it will all come out wrong and he’ll end up hurting Chris somehow and Chris deserves for everything to come out _right_ for once.

So he goes home and he eats and showers and sleeps and tries not to fall apart before he gets a chance to tell Chris how in love with him he is and how sorry he is for fucking everything up and making everything so much more difficult than it needed to be.

~

It’s a Saturday and Ashley has finally agreed to stop babysitting him and _go home_ and he’s alone and he _feels_ alone, which is perhaps worse than actually being alone.

He feels like a broken record.

_Darren-Darren-Darren._

Or maybe just broken.

Someone knocks on his door and when he answers, slightly confused, mostly expecting Ashley again, he’s shocked when he sees that it’s Darren. Darren, unshaven, in well-worn, fitted jeans and his favorite Michigan hoodie and looking desperately beautiful. Darren, a little frenzied, a little off-balance, a little fevered.

~

Darren finally makes his way to Chris’s apartment – on foot because he’s half-afraid that he’ll end up causing a pile-up with the amount of nervous energy fizzing through him like a mentos-and-coke cocktail is what’s rushing through his veins instead of blood. 

He stands in front of Chris’s door and feels his heart-beat pick up like it always has and he thinks _I’m an idiot, how could I not have known?_

He knocks on the door, and Chris is standing there in a thin cotton t-shirt and ninja-turtle pajama pants and purple socks and his eyes a startling, clear turquoise and Darren feels like crying or maybe laughing because he is so, so in love with this boy and _how could he not have known?_

And he thinks,

_you’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen_

and

_you’re so fucking lovely; the loveliest thing to ever come into my life._

Chris stutters out his name, confused and shaken and surprised and Darren just really, really wants to kiss him.  
He says, “Fuck, I miss you, Chris.” And Darren’s voice is raw and threaded through and honest and Chris’s face crumples, just a little.

Darren steps forward and hugs Chris so hard that he’s forced to step back with the momentum and Darren just follows, shuts the door behind them with his foot and turns until he’s pressing Chris against the door and hugging him so tightly that the breath squeezes out of their lungs. Chris’s face is buried in his neck and his body is pliant in Darren’s arms and he’s _gripping_ in a way that makes Darren want to hold onto him forever.

Darren pulls back and just looks at Chris, like he wants to memorize him, like he’s a song Darren needs to learn backwards-and-forwards, through-and-through, because it lights him up in a way that only certain songs do. Like Chris lights him up.

~

Chris can barely look at him.

Darren’s arms loosen slowly, one hand coming up to cup Chris’s jaw, tilting his head up. He stares into Chris’s eyes for a moment, and Chris wants to look away, but he doesn’t.

Darren’s fingers sweep across his jaw, bring him nearer and Chris doesn’t have the energy to fight him.

It’s Darren.

Their lips hover close for a moment.

“I am so in love with you, Chris.” And Chris falls into it because it’s all he can do and it’s slow and sweet, lips firm and pressing and Chris parts his mouth on a gasp. Darren’s tongue slips inside, traces his canines and presses deeper, body pressing closer, an inexorable, unhurried push-pull of a kiss that has Chris fisting his hands in Darren’s hoodie, Darren’s legs sliding between his until they are a legs-tangled, groin-to-groin, chest-to-chest sort of _close._ Chris feels fire lick up his spine with every press of Darren’s tongue, heat like molten lava dripping into his veins, heavy and heady and grounding. It counter-acts the way Darren’s body, pressed so close, his hands slipping underneath his shirt and sliding up and down the notches of his spine, makes him feel like he’s going to lose all his senses and melt into nothing but warmth.

Darren pulls away, eyes glittering fire-fly bright, letting out a slow breath.

Chris feels dazed and a little lost but he remembers Darren saying _I am so in love with you, Chris._ He remembers Isabelle saying _he’s going to come after you_ and Ashley saying _you have to know, Chris._

He breathes carefully and tries to find his footing here on this new, unexpected ground.

Darren leads him to the couch and part of Chris wants to balk, to demand an explanation, but the bigger, 21-year-old-in-love part of Chris remembers the way Darren _feels,_ how he feels like the exact opposite of _alone,_ exactly like _everything Chris wants._

~

Darren sits on the couch, slouching low, and pulls Chris by the hand until he’s straddling his thighs, and he feels Chris’s breath compress out of him when Darren’s hands slip up his shirt again and trace his sides gently, unable to stop touching him after a week with no contact. He moves his hands to Chris’s back to trace his spine before sliding forward and bracketing both sides of Chris’s ribs with his hands, feeling each inhale and exhale expand and contract in his palms.

He stares at Chris, unrelenting, and repeats himself, “I am so fucking in love with you, Chris,” and Chris’s breath stutters out sharply, eyes fluttering shut before blowing wide.

“I don’t - you’re with Isabelle. I don’t understand.” He sounds confused and insistent and Darren just wants him, all of him, every part of him.

Darren nods slowly, brings Chris a little closer with his hands still bracketing Chris’s ribs.

“I care for Isabelle. I love her. I just- and this is going to sound really awful and I’m sorry – but she was never – she was never the most important relationship in my life, Chris. I don’t love her like I love you.”  
Chris is falling to pieces just a little, and a lot of him wants to fall to pieces in Darren’s arms but he’s just – he’s so confused and he needs to make sure because if Darren’s wrong – Darren, who is honestly one of his best friends, Darren whom he knows almost better than himself – if Darren’s mistaken about his feelings, he’s not sure how he’s going to handle that.

“But why - why now? Why now, after everything? It’s been a – a really, really long time, Darren. Or. Well. It feels that way. It feels like it’s been forever.”

Darren’s just watching him, hands still bare on his skin and sending shivers rolling up and down his back.

“You took me by surprise,” he says quietly, voice soft. Chris feels his pulse skyrocket. “I didn’t – I didn’t know. It was all very _gradual_ with you and I can be – I can be really very dense sometimes, Chris. And I’m so sorry. I’m sorry – you have to know that. If I could take everything back and just be with you from the start I would, I really, really would. But I’m so sorry. I just – I love you. I love you and I’m sorry it took me this long to realize the _how_ of it _._ ”

Chris breathes, tries not to let his eyes burn but they do anyway, tightening and stinging and he feels the flush on his cheeks and the lump in his throat and every part of him is thrumming with tension and he is so in love with the boy beneath him and he wants all of this to be true. Desperately, _desperately._

Darren pulls him a little closer, still feeling him breathe.

“Chris.” He says, quietly, like a question, like a _please._

Chris takes a breath, and Darren breathes with him.

“If we’re doing declarations, here - I love you. I do. And this past week has been hell and I’m sorry but she - and she had every right, every right – but she asked me to, Darren so I had to. That was the concession I made myself. As soon as she asked me to back off I had to and -” His words are coming so quickly, because he has so much to say and he wants to get it all out now so it can be out of the way and they can move on to the kissing, to the _being_ , and his words tangle and knot until he stumbles to a stop mid-sentence.

Darren picks up where he left off.

“It’s okay, Chris. This is - none of this is your fault. All of it is mine and I’m so fucking sorry.” And then Darren breath stutters to a stop and his eyes widen impossibly and he squeezes his hands a little, tightening them on Chris’s ribs and Chris’s eyes flutter imperceptibly. “Just – the very first part. Can you say that again?  Can you say that again for me, please?” And he’s actually pleading with Chris, bringing him closer as he does, and Chris’s hands slip, of their own accord, to Darren’s hips, up underneath his hoodie, and he’s wearing no shirt beneath it and his skin is warm and slightly pebbled beneath his hands from goosebumps.

A full-body shiver racks Chris for a moment and he leans in and says quietly, directly into Darren’s ear, “I love you. I love you so much. I love you, I love you-” Darren’s mouth attacks his, and he kisses him with strong swipes of his tongue, flicking the roof of Chris’s mouth, hands strong on Chris’s body.

Chris grips just as tightly, tucking his body in as close as it will go, and Darren still has his hands on Chris’s ribs, synchronizing their breathing, and for some reason it’s driving Chris a little wild.

Finally Darren gives in and he wraps his arms completely around Chris’s torso, squeezing gently, before pulling his mouth away slowly, both of them panting against each other’s mouths, sharing breath.

They stay like that, wrapped around each other like they can’t let go.

Eventually, Chris will ask what he really wants to know.

“What does this mean for us?”

Darren will say, “What do you want it to mean?”

Chris will stay quiet, and Darren will lean forward and kiss him gently and say softly, “I can tell you what I want. I want us to be here in each other’s arms 10 years from now. I want us to be watching bad movies and mocking them relentlessly 20 years from now. I want us to be sitting on the floor with a good book and unhealthy Chinese food 30 years from now. And 40 years from now, and 50 years from now – I want you. I want everything.”

Chris will want to cry again because it’s awful, these things he says, cliché and trite and such easy promises to break and he has no right to say them like he means them and make them sound true and so, so sweet coming from his mouth, to make Chris want them all.

Chris will lean in close and kiss him hard and then gentle and then break away and whisper, half teasing, “Are you saying you want to aim for forever with me, Darren Criss?”

Darren will laugh, so lovely.

He’s so lovely and so sweet, he’s candy, he’s a toothache; he’s a _dream,_ and he has Chris’s heart. 

And it’s so much better now that he knows he has Darren’s, too.

Chris will lift an eyebrow at him, and Darren will just nod and murmur, soft and intimate, eyes dark and bright, “I would like to try and reach forever with you, Chris. I’m not sure we’ll make it, but I’m sure it will be fun trying.”

~

Epilogue:

Isabelle is alone in her apartment. It’s been 2 weeks. She feels – okay. For being head-over-heels in love with someone, she feels like she’s doing okay.

There’s a knock at her apartment door and she stops short – she’s watching mindless tv in sweats and a ratty t-shirt and eating cereal with a serving spoon.

She answers the door anyway.

It’s Darren and she wishes she could close the door and get into her tightest jeans and fix her hair but she can’t so she lets him in after a lengthy, slightly uncomfortable pause.

Darren looks at her with pained eyes, gentle and caring in that way he’s always been, but there’s an edge there that didn’t come from her and it looks like it could eclipse the moon so she doesn’t know how to respond to this situation. She waits.

“Look – Belle. Belle, you have to know how sorry I am. I’m sorry I hurt you. You were one of my closest friends and I’m sorry. But I also – I also have to say thank you because we weren’t- we weren’t right. And I know this must seem like I’m trying to rub it in your face but I’m not, I swear to you, I’m not. I just – I needed you to give me a kick forward, I guess. And I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t know what to say, so she just nods and offers a small, slightly sardonic smile and doesn’t say _you’re welcome._  
   
He holds her gaze, though. He’s always been able to own up to the messes he’s made.

“What I want to say is that I do love you, I do care about you. If you’re ever ready to be friends again, please just- just call me, okay?”

She’s surprised, though she shouldn’t be. She’s known him long enough now to know he would do something like this.

She offers a small but half-genuine smile, at least.

“I don’t know if – I don’t know. Not any time soon, Darren. But. Maybe. Maybe later. Way, way, later.” she says, slowly, a slight tilt to her lips. He laughs gently and hugs her and kisses her forehead and leaves and it hurts just as much as it did the first time, really.

She closes the door behind him and leans her forehead against it, gives herself a time limit to stay there – just 5 minutes. She steps away not 30 seconds later and rushes to the window anyway, but there are a lot of people in LA and she can’t find him in the crowd. She doesn’t know if she’s relieved to not see him walking down the street, side-by-side with a beautiful pale-skinned boy, or if she wanted that one last glance of him.

She pulls herself away and picks up the phone and calls her closest friend who promises to be there soon and she sits on her couch and waits, head up and eyes dry and fighting everything ugly and painful within herself. It’ll pass. It already is, slowly, _slowly_ , but it is.

~

Darren leaves Belle’s apartment, his chest feeling heavy – from knowing what he did to her, what didn’t have to happen at all. He gets in his car and he thinks about Chris, and the smile that spreads across his face is irrepressible and sun-bright because he can’t help it, because Chris has always done that to him, and that’s all he needs to know, really.

He remembers the words that the now-nameless, faceless person had said to him when he was 14 and too curious by half.

_“Love. Love is thinking of that person and, no matter how down you are, they bring a smile to your face. Even if they got you down in the first place – there’s always something there that lightens your heart.”_

_“But that’s – that can be anyone. My best friend does that for me. How do you know if it’s, like, you know, **real** love.”_

_And the person had laughed gently and said, so soft-spoken, “How does a person who can’t see know the sun is shining?”_

_“…They feel it?”_

_The smile that stretched across that face was full of joy, full of longing._

_“Exactly. It’s the same way with “real” love. You feel it. It’s in the smile.”_

And Darren, at 14, hadn’t understood.

Darren, at 24, driving to his boyfriend’s house, understands.

He calls Chris and puts him on speakerphone.

“Hey Darren.”

Darren’s grin is too wide by far.

“Hey, beautiful. What are you doing?”

“I’m putting on your hoodie. I like it. It’s comfortable.” Darren feels pleasure, heavy as molasses, wash down his spine, loosening every tense muscle in him.

“You can keep it. I like you in it.”

Chris laughs and it wraps around Darren like the warmth from the sun.

“It’s cute that you thought you were going to get it back at all, sweetheart.” And the _sweetheart_ there is just a little sarcastic and wry, but with no bite, and Darren laughs now too, and thinks Jesus _, Jesus,_ he loves this boy.  


**Author's Note:**

> (for my own peace of mind) disclaimer: i make no profit from this work of fiction. and it is just that - a very creatively licensed work of fiction that did not happen and is entirely made up by my over-active imagination. both Chris and Darren are actual people and this is not Stranger Than Fiction so this is not true, real, nor dictating or documenting anyone’s actual life, etc, etc.


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